Day 362: Not Knowing

When I came up with the title for this post, I immediately thought of another post, from Day 80, called “Learning from everything (Beginner’s Mind).”

I’ve been doing that a lot lately: remembering Posts from Bloggings Past.  I don’t know why, exactly, but here are three guesses:

1. I’ve written hundreds of posts, at this point*, so there are lots to choose from.
2. New Year’s Eve is approaching, so nostalgia is everywhere.
3. Human beings tend to focus on the past.

In the moment, here are some things I am Not Knowing:

1. What I am going to say in this post.
2. What I am going to do, during the five days I am taking off from work (starting today).
3. How I am going to transition this blog, at the end of the year, to whatever it’s going to be next year.

Now, that’s NOT what I expected to be writing about today. I thought I’d be writing, right now, about my mixed feelings about Not Knowing, which run the gamut from fear to love.  And there’s a lot I could write about that, because I have so much experience with Not Knowing.

As a matter of fact, here are some things I don’t know, every day:

1. What’s going to happen that day.
2. What’s really going on with people I meet.
3. Every-day details, including names of places, people and things; how to open friggin’ modern packaging; the “right way” to maneuver around other people when I’m walking; many rules of etiquette (including whether anybody even pays attention to those things any more); how to use my computer (and other machines) the way I want to (especially when technology keeps changing); etc. etc.

What do I notice, right now, about that list?   I notice that some of them are related to my imperfect memory. Other are related to:

• What other people are thinking.
• The future.

Am I alone, in Not Knowing those things?  I think not.

Okay!

Because Not Knowing can be uncomfortable, I would like to move on, to something I DO know, before I end this post.

I know that I love seeing these things in my office, every day I’m at work:

And I don’t KNOW,  but I think I’ll be seeing those again, next Thursday.

Thanks to Erik Gehring for the photograph “Willow Island,” to the artist who painted that lovely landscape (whose name escapes me now**),  and to everybody who’s read anything I’ve ever written, which would include you — of course! —  today.

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* Personally, I find that amazing.

** And which I hope I will know again, soon.